It's My Birthday
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Happy Friday to you all! Today is my 37th birthday. I’ve been waiting so long to be 37 (not old) just because of this scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. My late brother Kelson and I used to crack up over this scene. If only I were called Dennis, then this year would have been met with ultimate exhilaration.
In a world where we have forgotten phone numbers and each others’ birthday for two reasons: cell phones and Facebook, I encourage you to add people’s birthdays to your actual calendars. Years ago I made a snarky remark on FB after receiving my annual HBDs, and that was: “See you next year!”. As I become less and less active on Zuckland, I get to watch the well-wishes dwindle every trip around the sun as well. Don’t get me wrong, I’m truly grateful for the wishes on FB, but I think everyone can admit that HBDs on FB are terrible, and we’re all guilty of doing it. Step one is when you see someone having a birthday, send them a message in a different format - it’s more personal. Or, depending upon their generation, just give them a call. Step two is to add their birthday to your calendar so you can track it somewhere else. Then let’s all get the hell out of there, okay?
Momentum
I’m a very distractible person. I’m also aware that now, being constantly distracted is the norm. We are interrupted about every three minutes at work, and it takes about 23 minutes, on average, to get back on track.
What this really means is that you’re never getting back on track with anything. Ever again. Good luck! Well, just kidding. Sort of. What we need to do more of is defend our attention like our life depended on it. Seriously. If you can master your focus, your life will be completely different in a year.
If it takes a lot of activation energy for you to get something started, and you find yourself in the middle of that one thing and something is trying to pull you away, defend your momentum with everything you’ve got. Stay in motion and thank me later.
No One Cares About You
Except for me of course
Recently I’ve been fascinated with Twitter Spaces, a recycled form of Clubhouse where we chat with internet strangers on lofty topics with spectators. One of those sessions I was on said the phrase in the header title and I wrote it down: “No One Cares about You”, as a lesson to understanding human psychology. This is a challenge for me, since most of this newsletter is me writing about things I’m interested or even things that I’m working on. The point is, it’s best to shift things from “This is what I did” or “This is what I’m doing” to “This is what you should do / be doing.” You should shift this language for the same reason that everyone loves talking about themselves. This newsletter will get maybe twenty views. What I’m up to is not in really high demand. And that’s ok.
A Quick Story on Mindset
Pay attention to how you talk to yourself. Last night, at almost 1am, I found a leak underneath the sink. Then, after cleaning up and while testing the garbage disposal, the whole thing fell out of the bottom of the sink! After many frustrating and failed attempts to get this appliance lined up and reattached properly, I had to stop and I ended up telling myself “Come on, Kasey, you can figure this out.” No cap, I was successful at the next attempt. Shortly after I had this strange realization and I wondered who I would be if I talked to myself like that every time I faced a challenge. It made me question all of the times in the past where I did not pause and change my mindset, or even the times when I’ve said the opposite things:
“You’re not smart enough”
“You can’t handle this”
“You can’t figure this out”
Think about your internal dialogue and the things that you might be telling yourself. If those things are negative, note what you would normally say, then say the opposite and see what happens.
AI
On my last Podcast episode, I did a little bit of an experiment. Since I was playing with the idea of a voice model in Descript, I chose to make an AI-based episode. The majority of the script was written using ChatGPT, and then the output text was copy+pasted into Descript with my voice model. That episode is linked below. What a fascinating time to be alive. I recently saw an idea posted about recording (legally) a call at work, plugging the audio into a AI-based transcript tool, then taking the output into ChatGPT with a prompt for a bulleted summary of the call. You could then paste that result into an e-mail for meeting notes and action items. There are a ton of ideas for AI and we’re just getting started.
Ideas
Since we are constantly living in a technological revolution, it’s quite easy to start having ideas. For myself, having time off work has caused a tremendous surge in my creativity - ideas were sparking left and right. Now that I’m back at work, it is definitely noticeable that my creativity has diminished a lot. Find ways to fuel your creativity, but remember that it only starts at the idea. You must then execute. Some have gotten so good at coming up with ideas and then executing on those ideas with vast success, that now people will pay them just for their ideas. It’s possible. Not me though. Not yet at least.
What You Should Be Consuming
You see what I did there?
TV: The Last of Us (HBO) !
We also just finished Severance (Apple TV+), recommended by my great friend, Richard.
Movies: The Menu. Rayne is taking me out to a nice dinner next week. I hope we make it out alive!
Food: Ghee. I loosely followed these instructions below. So far we’ve added it to our coffee and cooked steak with it for tacos. Delish.
Have a great weekend,
Kase